Planning for Team Foundation Server
Whether you are a 5 person micro-ISV or a 3500 person enterprise, Team Foundation Server can help by making collaboration and communication easier than ever.
This document was written to help you choose the configuration of Team Foundation Server that is right for you.
Licensing
First, let’s think about licensing – how much is Team Foundation Server going to cost? This largely depends on how big your team is, and how you choose to access Team Foundation Server.
Small Team
If you are working on your own, or as part of a small team (5-person or less), than Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition may be the right choice for you. Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition offers all of the collaboration, security and performance advantages of the standard Team Foundation Server. The only difference is that Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition is limited to 5 members. If your needs ever grow, you can move to the standard Team Foundation Server by simply using a new product key.
Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition is included free of charge when you purchase any of the following products:
Visual Studio
A dedicated license of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition is included with Team Foundation Server. The only additional software that you must have is Windows Server 2003. With the exception of the Visual Studio Express Editions, members of your team can use any Visual Studio 2005 product to access Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition.
Large Teams
Teams who number from 5 to 3500 are best served by the full Team Foundation Server product. Team Foundation Server is licensed on a server + Client Access License (CAL) model similar to other Microsoft server products like SQL Server, Exchange and Microsoft Project Server. With this licensing model, you begin by purchasing the server license for Team Foundation Server and then add CALs that can access that server. Depending on how you are accessing Team Foundation Server, you may or may not need to purchase a CAL separately.
The CAL that gives you access to Team Foundation Server is automatically included when you purchase of any of the following products:
Visual Studio
If you are using any other Visual Studio product, or a Visual Studio Industry Partner solution like Teamprise or Teamplain to access Team Foundation Server, you must purchase a CAL separately. Microsoft has very specific rules about how CALs work with server products; please review the Microsoft licensing Multiplexing-Client Access License (CAL) Requirements brief for details.
Retail pricing for all of the products mentioned above can be found at:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/vstudio/aa700832.
For a full description of Visual Studio Team System licensing, please refer to this whitepaper.
Hardware
OK, now let’s think about where we are going to install those freshly purchased licenses.
First, we’ll cover basic hardware requirements. Then we’ll address implementing more advanced options like clustering, failover support and high-availability.
Basic Hardware Requirements
Again, let’s look at team size to help illustrate what kind of hardware is needed to support Team Foundation Server.
Team Foundation Server was designed and built to have a very small footprint on a system. To support teams of up to 400 members, Team Foundation Server can be installed completely on a single server. In this configuration, everything related to Team Foundation Server its XML Web Service interface, SQL Server 2005 data storage and Windows SharePoint 2.0 project portals are all installed on the single server.
This single server should be configured with a single 3.2 GHz CPU with 1 GB RAM to support up to 100 members; a single 3.2 GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM to support up to 200 members, and a dual 3.2 GHz CPU with 2 GB RAM to support up to 400 members.
Team Foundation Server’s efficiency benefits the largest enterprises as well; including those who are geographically distributed. To support teams of up to approximately 3500 members, Team Foundation Server should be installed in a dual-server configuration. The services required for Team Foundation Server (the XML Web Service Interface, Reporting, etc) reside on the application-tier server, while the database portions of Team Foundation Server reside on the separate data-tier server.
To support teams of up to 800 members, the application-tier server should be configured with a single 2.8 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM and the data-tier server should be configured with a dual 2.7 GHz CPU and 4 GB of RAM.
To support teams of up to about 3500 members, the application server should be configured with a dual 2.8 GHz CPU and 4 GB of RAM and the database server should be configured with a quad 2.7GHz CPU and 16 GB of RAM.
Clustering, Fail-Over and High-Availability
Team Foundation Server can support the needs of the most demanding development environments. Because Team Foundation Server uses SQL Server 2005 for its data storage, it is able to leverage SQL Server 2005’s inherent security and reliability.
In environments where additional availability is required, Team Foundation Server, in conjunction with SQL Server 2005 can be configured to support clustering, fail-over and/or high-availability.
Adding support for clustering, fail-over, and high-availability requires additional and specific hardware recommendations. For more information, see the Team Foundation Server Planning Guide.
Conclusion
Team Foundation Server's licensing and hardware requirements are scalable to any development team environment and to help you evaluate Team Foundation Server, we’ve made sure that any Trial or Workgroup edition of Team Foundation Server can be upgraded to the full product by simply obtaining and entering a new product key.
Thank you for your interest in Team Foundation Server; we are very excited to be able to offer our customers a complete collaboration server.
Additional Resources
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